The purpose of my research proposal and presentation was to gain an initial idea of what I was and wanted to research throughout the semester. When deciding my topic I immediately decided to do something with sports because I have a great interest in sports and follow them deeply. The purpose of the research proposal was to pre-plan what I was going to do the rest of the semester.

Final Product:

David Borst

Research Proposal

English 106

Proposed Research topic: An analysis of how steroids have effected professional sports.

Purpose: I intend to do more further research on the use of steroids in professional sports. I would like to gather statistics and useful data to show to the audience what steroids have done in sports, especially baseball. I will compare how sports were in the past without steroid and what steroids have done to sports today.

Background:

Throughout my life I have played several sports including baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis, and along with playing sports I have followed professional sports most of my life. I have seen the entire generation of athletes using steroids in sports. Although sports are becoming much more strict then they were ten years ago, different forms of steroids are being using that are undetectable. As a sports fan I believe performance enhancement drugs ruin sports giving athletes an unfair advantage against other players and past records.

Method:

For my literary review I already know that there has been a lot of research done to fix the steroid problem. There have been several investigations that released performance enchantment drug reports in which they expose the players that abused steroids. One notable report that I will talk about in my research project is the Mitchell Report. The Mitchell Report was a 21 month investigation led by Senator George J. Mitchell in which he gathered information about the use of performance enhancement drugs in the MLB and composed a list of individuals that used steroids while playing.

For my topic I think I may need to gather a more detailed history of the use of steroids and know the real damage they have done on sports. For my interview I will interview Mark Mattingly. He lives in my hometown and was a sports analyst for a sports radio station for 20 years. He is best candidate to interview for this topic that I can get a hold of. If he is unable to interview I will try to get a hold of a Purdue coach or trainer that would know a lot on the topic.

For my argumentative part of my topic I will argue that not enough has been done to prevent the use of performance enhancement drugs in sports. Although baseball has done quite a bit to prevent it, barely any other sports have done much investigating. My argument is that anyone caught using performance enhancing drugs should be kicked out of the league and any records they hold should be discarded.

Limitations:

The only limitation I have is that I don’t think that I would be able to cover every single piece of important literature without my research project getting boring.

Timetable:

3.5 first draft

3.12 final draft

3.26 oral interview report

4.2 first interview report

4.9 final interview report

4.21 first argumentative due

4.30 final draft of argumentative essay

Reflection:

After conducting my research proposal and presentation I then realized what I needed to do for the rest of the semester. I also gained a good initial impression of literature and possible interview options to choose from later on in the semester. Going into this proposal I wasn’t exactly sure what to do exactly but after doing research and writing out my proposal I had a good clear understanding of what I needed to do.